Differences And Similarities Between Harris And Dylan Klebold

The deadliest school shooting in the United States history took place on April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Virginia. The two teenage mass-murderers killed twelve people including students and one teacher and wounded about twenty other people. The shooting started around 11:19 a.m. when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold began shooting students outside of the Columbine High School. They moved inside and into the library killing most of their victims here. By 11:35 a.m. all of their victims were dead and by 12 p.m. they turned the guns on themselves putting the shooting to an end.

Eric Harris was born on April 9, 1981 in Wichita, Kansas. His parents were Wayne and Katherine. His father was an Air Force pilot, and moved him and his

family around a lot. Katherine was a caterer. In Eric's early years, he was a normal kid playing little league baseball. In 1933, the family moved to Littleton, Colorado after Wayne retired from the military. Eric started attending school at Columbine in 1995. Eric slowly began to change after attending school here. He got good grades, but his behavior was not good. He became great friends with Dylan Klebold where they continued to be friends throughout their high school years. He was always talkative. He was involved in soccer and wore bourgeois clothes but had a hard time fitting in with people at school. In his high school years is when things started to take a turn for the worst. Him and his friend, Dylan Klebold started playing violent video games which led to them drawing violent things and talking about violent things. Freshman year, he took Tiffany Typher to a dance and when he asked her out again, she said no. He didn't take rejection well and planned a fake suicide, where he laid on the ground squirting fake blood everywhere pretending to die. Sophomore year, Eric and Dylan were arrested for breaking into a van but were released soon after for their good behavior while being at the juvenile detention center. Eric and Dylan hated the jock style that their school presented, so the teens decided to dress in trench coats and were often made fun of by other students.
Dylan Klebold was born on September 11, 1981, in Lakewood, Colorado. Dylan's father was a geophysicist and his mother worked with the disabled. Their family was in the upper-middle class range of people. This made him an unlikely killer. In Dylan's early school years, he was enrolled in a gifted students program because he was so smart. He was a very shy, young boy who loved baseball, just like his friend Eric. He had always attended the Colorado school and in his freshman year of high school, he became friends with Eric Harris and a couple other mischievous boys. He led a normal teenage life, playing video games and having a job. He and Eric worked together at a pizza place for quite some time. He too, did not fit in well in his high school. He was not the jock type, or a sports kind of teenager. He developed a strong hate for the school and the people in it. He and Eric started their own trend, known as the Trench Coat Mafia, where they wore long, dark trench coats to school every day. After the Columbine shooting, reporters say they found a journal Dylan had written. In it, it explained his suicidal thoughts and his saddened thoughts of not having any relationships. He expressed his other thoughts and feelings through his homework essays in school.
While Eric and Dylan were taking German classes together they began to study about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party and became so intrigued with that subject.

They walked around school saluting people as Adolf Hitler once did. They also started their own website where Eric used the nickname, "Reb," and Dylan's nickname, "Vodka". The site was filled with violent rants against anyone and everyone that Harris disliked or thought had done him wrong. On this site, the two teens began to plot their attack on their school. They learned how to make bombs and other types of guns, to which he shared on his website. One of Dylan's other friends helped him get three guns and reported got another gun from someone at the pizza place the boys worked at. The pair made several videos of themselves talking about them shooting the students and Dylan said "I hope we kill 250 of you." The shooting is what they referred to as "Judgement Day." They hoped to kill hundreds hoping to achieve their vengience against the people they hated. Their plan took about a year until they were satisfied with it. Adding to Eric's rage was not only the people at his school, but for the Marine Corps Administration because they rejected him because of his psychiatric medication. Eric was taking Luvox for his

depression.
They started planning the attack sometime in 1998, but the attack didn’t occur until August 1999. On April 20, 1999, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, Eric and Dylan began their attack. Bombs were planted in the school’s cafeteria and were supposed to go off first, sending students and teachers into the parking lot where the two planned to shoot as many students and teachers as possible. They then intended to set off more bombs, which were attached to Dylan's vehicle, after ambulances and other help arrived. The propane bombs didn’t explode so the two entered the school after 11 a.m., shooting at anyone they came upon. They roamed the school for less than an hour, killing twelve students and a teacher and wounding more than twenty others. If it wouldn't have been for their poor skills in bomb-making, they would have ended up killing hundreds more. The rampage ended after 12 p.m. with Dylan and Eric committing suicide in the school’s library. The thirteen students and one teacher that died were Cassie Bernall, 17, Steven Curnow, 14, Corey Depooter, 17, Kelly Fleming, 16, Matthew Kechter, 16, Daniel Mauser, 15, Daniel Rohrbough, 15, William "Dave" Sanders, 47, Rachel Scott, 17, Isaiah Shoels, 18, John Tomlin, 16, Lauren Townsend, 18, and Kyle Valasquez, 16 (Columbine Massacre, May 5).
The outcome of the shooting left the nation astonished.

People wondered how such young, bright boys could do such a horrendous thing. People started to put blame on violent video games and rock ‘n’ roll culture, bullying in schools, insufficient school security and gun control (Klebold, 2015). The parents of the mass murderers say that the boys' favorite past times was playing the violent video game, "Doom". In this video game, you are the killer; killing as many people as you can, carrying guns and bombs. Their teacher says that not long before the shooting, she had assigned the class a project. Eric and Dylan made up their own version of "Doom" where they wore trench coats, carried guns, and killed the school athletes that they hated. Eric even named his gun after his favorite character in the game, which was Arlene (Harris,

2015).
Columbine will forever be affected by this shooting. When students and teachers finally went back to school, everything was a mess. Open desks filled rooms; some from those who died and some from those who decided to be homeschooled. Some students even felt guilt towards Eric and Dylan for not being friends with them and including them in things at their school.
This terrible disaster will have an impact on not only that town, but on the entire nation forever. This shooting brought many new laws out about guns in schools and other safety issues as well. Schools have now become more and more aware of these types of occurrances and are doing everything in their power to try to prevent this from ever happening. In this town, people had to come together and deal with this tragedy together and grieve and talk about what happened in the school that morning. Schools around the globe are finding more and more ways to have their schools become a safer environment for students and to hopefully prevent anything like this to happen.